One Punch Man Chapter 171 review: Saitama huge twist

All right, so we’re back, and it’s been a little over a month since the last chapter, but this one’s opening up with us seeing like dorms, I guess, at the Hero Association, I suppose that this is like a new development that they implemented after the whole big Monster Association/Garo battle. And we’re coming to what is said to be Saitama’s apartment, at least according to King, and this makes sense because we saw that Saitama lost his apartment complex in the battle that took place at Sea City.

So now I guess he moved into the Hero Association here with some other Heroes, and these other Heroes that we see here are Butterfly DX, who we saw in the Hundred Eyes Octopus sequence with Flashy Flash in season two, Chain and Toad, who was a part of Death Gatling’s team to go after Garo as well as season two, and this other guy here with the beanie, his name’s Forte, and in Monk’s continuity, we’ve only seen him like one time in the bonus chapter called Pork Cutlet Bowl, which I think was in volume seven.

He was part of the team that McCoy sent to the police station to take on the Surprise Attack Monster, and Butterfly DX and Enchanto were part of that team as well, so there’s a nice little continuity tie-in there. But they’re all A-Class Heroes and they live on the same floor as Saitama, and that’s pretty interesting. It makes you think like, hmm, why is that? But they’re kind of forcefully introducing themselves to him.

This is more going into the hazing/bullying that exists in the Hero Association outside of the S-Class that has been mentioned throughout the series, we saw most prominently with the Blizzard Group. But instead of Saitama answering the door, it’s King, and of course, King scares them because King is King, but he says that he came to visit the guy that lives there as well, and then he says, you know, I wonder where Saitama went.

That’s how we know for sure that this is Saitama’s new apartment. But anyway, we’re coming back to Ground Zero at Z City, and we see like this Hero Association helicopter tracking down Pig God, who was also there, and it’s really interesting how the sequence is playing out because we’re seeing the Hero Association being pretty aggressive with how he’s talking about Pig God.

Like, good thing we put a tracker on him, what’s he doing at the Monster Association disaster zone from the other day? And we also see like he brought an A-Class hero with him who’s ranked 35 named Air, and he’s like, you brought me here just in case something like this happened, didn’t you? I’ll take care of capturing Pig God, but first let’s talk about the sponsor of this blog, Manscaped, the global brand for Men’s Grooming and hygiene products.

One Punch Man Chapter 171 review: Saitama huge twist

So I actually really like this company, and they sent me some pretty cool stuff here, like this the Lawnmower. This is Manscape’s fourth generation electric waterproof trimmer with Advanced Skin safe technology, which reduces nicks and cuts on the most sensitive regions of the body.

The Lawnmower 4.0 trimmer also has a super smart cordless charging system, which is pretty sick, and it has LED lights on it to show you how much juice you have. It apparently lasts up to 90 minutes with a full charge. So aside from that, they also sent me this Prop Reviver, which is a ball toner, so I guess it’s for before a date or something.

There’s also more ball stuff here because this is crop preserver ball deodorant, but for a limited time, you’ll get all of that plus two free gifts like this the shed travel bag, which is pretty cool, but also these anti-chafing boxer briefs. So guys, go to manscape.com today and get 20% off plus free international shipping plus two free gifts when you use my promo code Zone. All the links will be in the description. And once again, I want to thank Manscape.

Always use the right tools for the job, so they’re taking more ownership of the heroes more so than what we’ve seen before. This is more so going to play in with the next Big Arc of the series. It’s going to be like we’re gonna be moving more so away from the monster stuff and we’re going to be going more into hero politics. I know that sounds boring, but trust me, it’s not.

This is kind of just like the beginning of that. But we also see in the rubble here that Black S has survived because the last time we saw him was in chapter 152 after 54 trillion of his cells had merged together become Platinum S like a 100 cell version of him like broke away as insurance, but it wound up running into Metal Bat.

We saw Metal Bat wound up hitting him, and we didn’t really see what happened after that, and that’s what led to a lot of confusion. Like is he going to live? Is he going to die? But the implication here, I guess, is that this is like one single Black S cell. Like this is the last one. After Metal Bat hit the 100 cell version of him, just one was able to survive, and this is it.

But we see the A-Class hero Air here. It’s like really aggressive towards Pig God, like trying to get him to come back to the med lab. We can assume that this is the med lab that maybe Metal Knight oversees because we saw at the end of 168 that he was kind of taking in all of the heroes that were on the battlefield to be decontaminated and checked on and whatnot, but he’s looking for a fight.

He actively wants to fight Pig God. The level of delusion here is typical of what we’ve seen earlier on in the series of these heroes, but he just assumes that he can take Pig God now because he lost to Garo. But we’re also finding out here that not only Black S has survived but also Evil Natural Water.

One Punch Man Chapter 171 review: Saitama huge twist

There’s like a little puddle version of him here, and this goes back to chapter 157 because after Saitama had serious punched Evil Natural Ocean and part him like Moses did to the Red Sea with the Beyblade, we saw that his eyeballs were still intact afterwards, and we speculated that, “Oh, this probably means that he’s coming back,” and this is precisely why Pig God has returned to the battlefield here, to make sure that not all of Evil Natural Water was dead.

But he assumed that other monsters had survived as well, but even in this little puddle form, Evil Natural Water is still a serious threat because he one-shots Air with one of his water jets right through the throat, and then Pig God just immediately eats him, but winds up getting shot from inside. And Pig God just shakes this off because Pig God has regenerative abilities.

This was originally mentioned in the manga, but then it was like retconned, and then later added to a bonus chapter for some reason. But yeah, like his fat has regenerative properties. I’m not sure about his organs that are getting messed up here, but I guess it doesn’t matter. Like Peacock’s just gonna be fine, like he’s just gonna eat some Ramen apparently and then he’ll just regenerate from this.

So yeah, Evil Natural Water is dead now thanks to Big God. Then we come back to Black Ass, who’s observing Saitama rummaging through the debris in Z City here because he’s looking for his apartment. We saw him doing this with Genos at the end of the previous chapter, and when Black Ass spots him, he realizes that Saitama was the one who zero punched Garo, and this is really important because now this means that Black S is one of, like, I don’t know, two or three characters that knows the truth of what had happened.

I mean, obviously Genos knew, but outside of that, everyone else is kind of under the assumption that it was Blast who defeated Garo and then just dipped out. But the twists don’t stop there because as Saitama pulls up the portion of his apartment complex that has his apartment in it, suddenly Rover pops out of here, and we see Genos hold him up, but he’s obviously much smaller now. And this is interesting because we haven’t seen Rover in a very long time.

I think maybe the last time we saw him was chapter 125, I could be wrong, but that was after he had fought Bang and Bomb and got like crossbank dragon slayer fish and bangling inadvertently told him to sit, and he obeyed him, which implied that he was almost fully conditioned at that point, because that’s kind of like the story of Rover. Like, he would get into a fight with somebody, get hit really hard, and be told to sit, and then I guess the third time around, it just conditioned him fully.

We saw it with Garo, saw it with Saitama, was prominently obvious. And I guess that was the straw that broke the camel’s back with Bang and Bomb. But he also may have gotten smaller after every battle, and I guess we could just assume that going through the Monster Association, being pulled out of the ground, everything else that happened on the battlefield just messed him up, and he just shrunk down for some reason.

I’m not really sure why. It’s never explained why he shrinks, but it’s convenient to make him cuter and more of a plot device for Saitama to adopt him here, I guess. Now, I don’t know if Saitama recognizes that this is Rover that he had punched before, or if this is just typical oblivious Saitama and he doesn’t really care because he sees that, oh hey, this is just a dog that’s not aggressive and he’s nice, so he’s just adopting him now because he feels like it.

But Black S is observing this, and he realizes that Saitama is maybe the kind that just avoids needless violence, and that he won’t kill you as long as you look like some sort of animal that’s not aggressive, which Saitama has always kind of had that disposition, even with what he recognizes as full-blown monsters.

And black ass sees this as like an opportunity because, as we’ve established, he’s probably had like one single cell right now, and he says that he’s so weak that even a puppy could beat him, so he’s super vulnerable. Now that he knows that saitama is the one above all, he realizes that the best place to be right now would be taking refuge with someone who cannot be defeated in that way.

He can fight his time and eat more and build up his cell stock. But also, at this time, Genos conveniently says that he has things to take care of at Hero Association headquarters and he leaves. And then right after that, black s appears in front of Saitama at the very end of the chapter, seemingly acting like an animal or something.

So what is black ass scheming? Well, I’m not entirely sure, but I assume that he’s still 100% a heel. Like, I don’t think he’s having a face turn here. He may seem more affable to the audience for the foreseeable future, but I do think that he is up to no good. Once he regains enough of his strength and gets back to his normal state or maybe even surpasses that, I think that eventually he will become one of God’s main disciples.

Because it’s kind of subtly implied that he may be a primordial monster, like he was directly made by God, kind of like how Sage Centipede was, or at least that’s my theory on him. As for Rover, the verdict’s still out. He’s kind of having a face turn here, I guess, because he’s not really that intelligent.

He kind of just needs ownership and commands, if anything. But I wouldn’t be surprised if black ass influences him later on as well to turn heel again. But yeah, that’s pretty much it for this one. Let me know what you think is gonna happen with Saitama, black s, and Rover. Have a great day and I’ll see you in the next one.